While India doesn't have a formal anti-satellite weapon programme, the country's top missile scientists revealed this week that they have gradually laid the groundwork for precisely this sort of weapon. In fact, Dr Avinash Chander, director of India's Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), has revealed that if the government calls upon DRDO to deliver such a weapon, it would take less than three years to first test.

According to Dr Chander, "We have developed technology blocks that can be integrated to create an anti-satellite weapon. What we need is the technology to boost the munition into space, which we have proven very robustly with the Agni programme. And we need a kill vehicle of considerable energy and terminal phase accuracy, which our scientists have proven with the advanced air defence (AAD) interceptor tests. We can put these blocks together and finetune the weapon as an anti-satellite platform. If we are required to, we can deliver this."

DRDO chief Dr VK Saraswat was more circumspect. "We already have a design study of such a weapon, but at this stage the country does not require such a platform in its strategic arsenal. Testing such a weapon also has a lot of repercussions which have to be taken into consideration. But testing is not an issue -- we can always rely on simulations and ground test. We can see in the future if the government wants such a weapon. If so, our scientists are fully ready to deliver it."